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The August update to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) provides clearer policy direction for renewable energy developments mandating that the English planning system supports the UK’s transition to net zero.
The new look NPPF gives clean energy (and water) their own dedicated chapter, with separate policies for plan-making and decision-making.
But has anything other than format changed? For renewable energy developers, the most immediate changes are set out in the national decision-making policies. These introduce standardised policies for the determination of applications, including those for renewable and low-carbon energy.
Decision making is a balancing exercise; weighing the proposals ‘good’ against its ‘impacts’. Mostly decision makers are free to give such weight to various aspects of a scheme as they see fit. However, as is the case of Policy W3, sometimes the weight to be given is prescriptive. W3 requires decision-makers to give ‘substantial’ weight to the benefits of improving energy security, life-extension and repowering of existing infrastructure of existing sites, and the contribution small-scale schemes and community-led projects can make to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Repowering gets its own broad definition, helpfully confirming repowering does not need to result in like-for-like replacement, recognising that new infrastructure will be required.
Semantics perhaps, but this ‘substantial’ weight is an enhancement over the ‘significant’ weight that these elements of a project previously attracted. This wording change raises the threshold for assessing planning benefits and should make it harder for decision-makers to refuse renewable schemes unless identified harms clearly outweigh those benefits.
The new NPPF cuts across existing local plan policies that sought to constrain renewable energy development to certain areas. Now a scheme that lies outside a prescribed area is to be determined not against the local plan policies but against the NPPF as a whole. This represents a shift from the previous approach and should give developers greater flexibility where local plan policies are restrictive.
Government has indicated that Planning Practice Guidance (the detailed guidance that sits behind the NPPF) will be updated to provide further guidance on identifying suitable areas for renewable and low-carbon energy.
When it comes to plan making by local planning authorities, we see that Policy W1 strengthens expectations for early engagement between planning authorities, utilities, regulators and infrastructure providers to identify capacity constraints and future infrastructure needs. Development plans must now make provision for renewable and low-carbon energy and grid infrastructure, including stand-alone schemes, and avoid policies that would constrain future operation or expansion.
The policy encourages a more proactive, coordinated approach to planning for clean energy than old NPPF paras 165-169 which focused on positive renewable strategies but did not require early engagement.
We also look forward to the forthcoming spatial development strategies (SDS). These SDSs are to, among other things, set out the type, extent and broad location of strategic infrastructure needed to enable development and are to expressly include the provision of renewable and low carbon energy infrastructure and the electricity network as a whole. The SDSs are intended to coordinate the provision of this strategic infrastructure.
Conclusion
Overall, the new NPPF marks a clear policy shift in favour of renewable energy. It moves further away from recent policy approaches that constrained delivery, particularly the former local support requirement for onshore wind.
By elevating the weight given to renewable benefits, broadening support for schemes outside identified suitable areas and requiring more infrastructure-led plan-making, the Framework should make the planning environment more positive for renewable and low-carbon development.